Cell phone charges

This week I got hit with an unexpected medical expense. It's a medical expense because I incurred it while I was in the hospital, but I didn't know about it til this week, nearly 3 months after the event.

We've been on a Cingular family plan for several years. We have 500 "anytime" minutes every month, and because we hardly ever use them all, we also have a rollover plan. That means we can save up unused minutes.

After all this time, I've pretty much stopped checking my minutes balance, because we've never ever gone over. So I was shocked to see a cell phone bill that was $40 more than usual.

After using some very colorful language, I called customer service and asked them to tell me what my average usage is. It turns out that I used 1200 minutes during the month that I was sick in the fall and I burned through my rollover minutes. This month, when I went over my 500 minute limit, I ended up having to pay big bucks because there were no rollover minutes left. Usually, though, I average under 500 minutes.

It turns out I can get a plan with 700 minutes for only $10 more per month. But since I have been fine with 500 minutes all this time, I didn't really want to commit to a more expensive plan.

Here's what I did.

First, I convinced the customer service guy to sell me the 700 minute plan retroactively. It didn't take much convincing. I just asked, and he said yes right away. I suspect they're allowed to do it if asked but not allowed to suggest it. So that means the $40 extra I paid this month will be divided up. $10 will pay for the 700 minute plan for a month, and $30 will be a credit on my bill.

Next, I made sure I can get out of the 700 minute plan and drop back down to 500 minutes whenever I want.

I'll use the 700 minute plan for a couple of months, build back up a cushion of rollover minutes, then go back to 500 minutes a month.

And I'll put a note in my calendar to check my minutes once a month or so, just to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I also checked again what the cheapest text messaging package is. It costs $5 per month. Because I only use 5 or 10 text messages per month, it seems better to keep paying fifteen cents apiece.

I hate it when my own idiocy costs me money. Luckily I wriggled out of this one, but I owe late charges at the library AGAIN. At least I haven't gotten any parking tickets yet this year.